jaustin

Can anyone else comment on the durability claims here - I wear a lot of knitwear but in my experience it is almost never the case that they fail at the seams. Is the cut/sew mechanism of fabrication part of the weakening? (my jumpers tent to either wear through in elbows (patchable!) or ultimately get nicked/cut by something like a branch I failed to avoid).

This is a sure sign we’re nearing the shoe event horizon (https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Shoe_Event_Horizon and audio https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nEI19kJ5GfU )

Do you still have a link or some search pointers to the article about SBC please? Would love to read it

I have a Clicks Keyboard and love it. As far as I can tell the team behind the Clicks are pretty intertwined with https://www.fxtec.com/ - in that FX Tech staff seem to be involved in Clicks support, etc.

The Clicks Keyboard for iPhone (14) was a great concept, and pretty well executed for a V1 - I haven’t tried their follow-up devices.

But assuming it’s the same team, there’s a history of shipping devices behind them.

(That isn’t to encourage you to pre-order! Just to perhaps contribute some more optimism to your hope that they succeed)

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation also make a web-based Python Editor at https://python.microbit.org which is designed to be a supportive introduction to text-based coding and physical computing with no installation, friendly error messages and device simulation

I wish I knew the paper, but https://github.com/chirp was a proprietary data-over-sound-through-air implementation that worked pretty well and sounded really cute (to my ears, anyway). It's not a paper, but there's this https://www.scientia.global/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Chirp...

Did you look at Mattercraft? https://zap.works/mattercraft/ - the team that are building it have been delivering mixed reality experiences across platforms in Zappar for a long time and it's very complete.

This is fascinating. A reminder that being (broadly) right in your analysis doesn't necessarily mean you can execute to turn things around.

They note the impact to the high-end, the fact that UI is crucial, they even had a good guess at 2008 sales numbers (estimate 14m, looks like real was 13m).

I was intrigued by this bullet point on how their Maemo platform could help:

* Cellular development of the maemo platform and the politics surrounding it?

Any folks from Nokia in this time care to shed more light on that? I always felt the N9 was a beautiful piece of design and implementation - just late and under-supported.

These look really nice, thanks for sharing.

Out of curiosity, were you setting out to create something new for stylistic reasons? Or licensing? For the fun of it? From a distance I'm trying to distinguish this from something like remix icons https://remixicon.com

Do you plan to keep adding more icons? How will these relate to the MynaUI Pro plan in the long run?

MakeCode Arcade also has the ability to put your games on physical hardware, which can be a game changer for engagement. A simple game on a 128x256 grid can feel a bit “rubbish” on a laptop screen, but put it on something with a Gameboy form factor and it comes into its own.

Arcade also has amazing editors for sound, sprites, etc.

Here’s Flappy Bird https://arcade.makecode.com/88444-57913-28610-31751 (Not made by me!)

Looks like it's an "and" in silicon and an "or" at boot time?

RP2350 includes a pair of open-hardware Hazard3 RISC-V cores which can be substituted at boot time for the Cortex-M33 cores. Our boot ROM can even auto-detect the architecture for which a second-stage binary has been built and reboot the chip into the appropriate mode

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/s...

I'm positing a model where a third party does the influencing, not the company delivering the LLM/service. What's to say that it's an ad if the Wikipedia page for a product itself says that the product "establishes new standards for quality, technological leadership and operating excellence". (and no problem if the edit gets reverted, as long as it said that just at the moment company X crawled Wikipedia for the latest training round).

So more like SEO firms "helping you" move your rank on Google, than Google selling ads.

I'd imagine "undetectable to the LLM training orgs" might just be service with a higher fee.

I'm sure it's not long before you get the first emails offering a "training data influencing service" - for a nice fee, someone will make sure your product is positively mentioned in all the key training datasets used to train important models. "Our team of content experts will embed positive sentiment and accurate product details into authentic content. We use the latest AI and human-based techniques to achieve the highest degree of model influence".

And of course, once the new models are released, it'll be impossible to prove the impact of the work - there's no counterfactual. Proponents of the "training data influence service" will tell you that without them, you wouldn't even be mentioned.

I really don't like this. But I also don't see a way around it. Public datasets are good. User contributed content is good, but inherently vulnerable to this I think?. Anyone in any of the big LLM training orgs working on defending against this kind of bought influence?

We've been using this in the Micro:bit Educational Foundation (microbit.org) to fill a gap in hardware design tooling, and get visual diffs of our schematics and gerbers during PCB design iterations. It's kinda wild that's what we ended up doing, but if you want to be sure your radio layout didn't change at all when you're making a minor revision to a different part of the board, visual diffs are perfect.

That said, next project we want to try something more integrated with EDA tools. If anyone else has followed this path, we'd love to know.

Next can we have them identify ambient noises that need amplification for safety reasons, like the nearly-silent electric car about to run me over, or the bike I'm about to accidentally step in front of? As someone who spends a bit too much of my time walking around on calls, I think selective amplification of ambient sounds for safety would be amazing!

I've been messing around with Q10 keyboards, MCUs and cases but not got to anything as good as a Fairberry - I'd love one or two if you have spares! Couldn't see details for private messaging you, but my profile has enough to email me on :) How is the software support? I'm using Blackberry Keyboard on my Key 2 and it's pretty good, does that work okay with Fairberry?

The Ux here looks really nice, and I felt like I'd seen it before. It's a bit like a 2020s interpretation of the webOS Wave Launcher. ( https://youtu.be/dcyJLaK4YBI?t=46 if you'd never seen it).

It's used for flashing the BBC micro:bit in both Microsoft MakeCode (https://makecode.microbit.org) and the micro:bit Python Editor (https://python.microbit.org). MakeCode uses it for lots of other devices like MakeCode Arcade too https://arcade.makecode.com )

It's amazing for students to be able to quickly get a program they've written in their browser onto a device in their hands that can respond to and interact with the real world.

Also great because with MicroPython and the Python Editor you get a standalone Python environment including REPL that's completely isolated from the PC - schools love it because no matter what the students do they're not going to break the host PCs.

(The firmware that implements web USB on the micro:bit's USB interface chip is open source, DAPLink https://github.com/ARMmbed/DAPLink)

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation do it for https://python.microbit.org/ where the scope is conveniently limited (to MicroPython running on a device with finite flash/RAM)

https://github.com/microbit-foundation/pyright (and more specifically https://github.com/microbit-foundation/pyright/blob/microbit... )

This is a new version of the micro:bit Python Editor designed to engage students learning text-based coding.

The goal is not to hide all the complexities of syntax and structure, but to support students in learning about these things.

There's a simulator so you can try your code without the micro:bit.

Source code here: https://github.com/microbit-foundation/python-editor-v3

CodeMirror 6.0 is pretty sweet - If you want to see it in action, we've been using it to build the new version of the micro:bit Python Editor:

https://python.microbit.org/v/beta

We’ve found CodeMirror 6’s APIs and in particular its extensibility to be well thought out and great to work with.

Thanks Marijn!

Micro:bit Educational Foundation | Front-end Developer | Oxford, UK | Onsite +Flex

https://apply.workable.com/micro-bit-educational-foundation/...

Working with the Web Tech Lead and wider tech team, you will develop web applications and enhance the microbit.org website in order to help children around the world get creative with digital technology, with a specific focus on broadening the diversity of students passionate about computing. This is a broad role in a small organisation, and will include working on “micro:bit classroom”, which provides connectivity between students and teachers in a virtual classroom and an online editor/development environment for students to write Python code to run on the micro:bit device.

The role will employ a wide range of skills and gives the chance to work on different parts of the web stack across several projects. We don’t expect you to have experience in all areas of our stack, but to give a flavour:

  * Front-end code uses React and TypeScript (including the Python editor).
  * The microbit.org website uses the Gatsby static site generator paired with the Sanity headless CMS.
  * We use Create React App as a basis for new apps, supported by backend code in AWS Lambda (Node.js) and Pusher for WebSocket-based communication.
  * We deploy to AWS via CI/CD pipelines using CircleCI or GitHub actions.
  * Extensions to the Microsoft MakeCode coding environment use TypeScript with a little C++.

Following in the footsteps of the pioneering BBC Micro in the 1980s, the project started in collaboration with the BBC in 2016. There are now more than 5 million BBC micro:bit devices in use across 70 countries. The micro:bit is at the heart of a diverse ecosystem of hardware accessories, software editors and educational resource providers, and a key role of the tech team at The Foundation is to support this ecosystem in growing and diversifying in an open way.

There's scope for flexibility in hours and location, though we'd like you to be able to spend ~50% of your time in the office once offices are a thing again. Not all the team work full time...

Thankfully not - the file gets larger but as there's an MCU managing the writing to flash, it selects the right binary for the appropriate device.

There are some limitations around ensuring backwards compatibility: if you want to write a program that runs on both devices, you have to adhere to the constraints of the smaller one - but I think it's a fair tradeoff!

We're going through today making repos public. I've just done MicroPython and it's here https://github.com/microbit-foundation/micropython-microbit-... ...as the temporary home while we stabilise things before hopefully the port can head upstream.

Headsup that the location of CODAL (the underlying layer that supports the micro:bit) is going to move today as part of going private to public so there will be times when that repo doesn't build (or at least, docs are out of sync with where the repos are) at some point during the day.

The MicroPython build has SoftDevice in it, including a Bluetooth bootloader so you can flash MicroPython programs using the mobile apps (betas being released today, too, see https://tech.microbit.org/software/beta/). However, we want to do the BLE API design in the open for how MicroPython will be a GAP Central or GAP Peripheral. Of course, as the code goes upstream it should also be possible to use other BLE stacks and existing MicroPython APIs, but for now our focus is on the classroom environment and getting consistency in experience on MicroPython and BLE flashing/update.

In the classroom we strongly expect people to continue using micro:bit Radio for user programs because of how easy it is to use and the way it allows micro:bits to communicate with each other.

Glad you like the Universal Hex format! And thanks for the headsup on the SVG - we noticed it earlier and there's a fix on the way through the site build(though whether you get 'Male code' or just bad kerning seems weirdly system dependent). Fix via https://github.com/microbit-foundation/dev-docs/pull/168 :D

No battery charger on board, but we’ve done a lot of work on power management so you can sleep with very low power consumption (>100uA) on USB - which means you can use USB battery packs. AAAs work really nicely in classrooms and for teachers (easy to buy, clear what you need, low cost batteries are safe, also familiar for the existing 5M users), and have a lot going for them in terms of safety for open electric devices used by novices! The AAA batteries can also last a lot longer now if you design your code to be lower power.

You might also like some of the accessories people have made - I used these when strapping some micro:bits and RGB LEDs to samba drums and it worked great! http://www.kaise.com.tw/index.php?route=product/product&path...

I think there's room for both worlds. People have certainly done as you describe - just picking examples from the micro:bit ecosystem that I know well - Microsoft MakeCode is an example of something that takes a "block" world and maps to either JavaScript or Python. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/makecode or as an example http://makecode.microbit.org/. Edublocks does similar for Python (or specifically MicroPython) https://edublocks.org/.

When you start working directly with kids watching them use programming environments, though, it's often amazing how quickly things like the details of parallelism, events, sequencing, start having an impact on programs and making simple things feel 'broken'. I can quite imagine that when trying to achieve specific goals in education, the details and semantics of a language can get you into trouble. Sometimes in order to ensure kids don't get frustrated early, it's necessary to pare back some of the complexity until their understanding of computing is developed enough to bring complexity back... (have a look at https://makecode.microbit.org/device/reactive as an example of how MakeCode deals with this on the micro:bit).

Another example that comes to mind on this topic is https://stride-lang.net/ - this is very Java-derived, but as I understand it form their publications, the changes away from Java were necessary in order to allow some of the graphical/scaffolding features to work well without entering an 'uncanny valley'.

Hopefully some of the MicroBlocks team will also chime in on this though!

You can with the MicroPython project that this was forked from, but not necessarily with mainline yet, depending on what behaviour you want. https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/3474 https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/888

There's a nice blog on what Arm did for micro:bit on this:

https://community.arm.com/education-hub/b/rob-leeman/posts/b...

Micro:bit Educational Foundation | Lead Fullstack Developer | Oxford, UK | ONSITE with flexibility, Full-time The Micro:bit Educational Foundation (http://microbit.org) is a not-for-profit with the global vision of helping every child to be an inventor. We are enabling children around the world to get creative with technology and learn to code in school, in clubs and at home. We do this primarily through educational programs based around the BBC micro:bit board, and building technology that just works for teachers and students in a school environment. To do this we're looking for a committed, flexible and collaborative software engineer to lead the development, deployment and maintenance of our systems and web presence at microbit.org.

This site is the first port of call for millions of students and teachers around the world who are learning about coding and technology using the BBC micro:bit. The role will require you to work with a range of languages and tools; we need someone who can start with what we have and lead the creation of our next generation platform.

Alongside this you will start to develop our community portals, ecosystem and accessory listings, and work with upstream communities to enhance the micro:bit code editors (makecode.microbit.org is Typescript and python.microbit.org is Javascript+Python). Our current stack includes Ruby/Jekyll and CircleCI deployments to AWS.

More info https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/j/29C3...

As well as building our own suite of sites and services, we also need to be confident contributing to and staying on top of other open-source tools that our partners are developing in conjunction with us. Most significantly, these are Typescript (makecode.microbit.org) and JS+Python-based (python.microbit.org)

The micro:bit draws on technology from our global partners, and you will be working closely with engineering teams inside Arm, Microsoft, MIT, Nominet and with the global Python Community to deliver innovative products that transform the way computing is taught around the world.

It's awesome working for a creative not-for-profit that's all about broadening the range of people that get excited by computing. We're flexible about office hours, working style, and the team's built from people passionate about EdTech. This person will be hiring other team members as we grow.

We've got freelance and contract jobs too: https://micro-bit-educational-foundation.workable.com/

(full disclosure - I work for micro:bit)

If you're looking specifically at Lego, then the sbrick-plus https://www.sbrick.com/ can talk directly to a BBC micro:bit https://github.com/vengit/pxt-sbrick so you can use the micro:bit and Lego together. There are also a huge range of micro:bit accessories from third parties that do robotics, sensing, lights, etc.